NEWS: "Live Freaky! Die Freaky!": Portrait of a Punk Rock Puppeteer

"I wanted to push the envelope, and I wanted to go so far as to actually offend both the liberals and the right,” Roecker says proudly. “I think I have succeeded.”

Odious art is all well and good. But here’s the thing: His movie would have probably never gotten the attention it has thus far (in mags like Rolling Stone and Kerrang! and tons of music-related blogs) if it weren’t for its unbelievable, star-studded cast, a who’s who of seminal punks and nouveau rockers that includes Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong in the lead role as Charlie “Hanson,” Rancid’s Tim Armstrong (who also produced the flick through Hellcat Films, a new division of his record label) as narrator and the likes of Travis Barker, AFI’s Davey Havok, Good Charlotte’s Benji and Joel Madden, John Doe, actress Asia Argento and Go-Go Jane Wiedlin, to name a few. Not to mention a gal under the not-so-disguised alias of Nelly Posbourne as lead character Sharon “Hate.” (Coincidence that her character is a mama-to-be named Sharon? I think not.)

Live Freaky is, in fact, one fucked up piece of celluloid. Forget the fact that it shows full-on clay-genital penetration shots or that it re-enacts the Manson family slayings in vibrant, red-splattered Kill Bill fashion. To many, what’s most distasteful about this Disney-Small-World-gone-demented yarn is what spews from the characters’ tiny sculpted mouths. One review noted, “Every word is calculated to offend.”